And no walls were there.
Walls also didn’t have fingers that could curl around your upper arms, which, by the time I’d swung my head around, had happened.
I saw army green tee and I tipped my head back, back, back and stared straight into Raiden Ulysses Miller’s eyes.
Close up.
I’d seen them in his yearbook picture, of course, dozens (okay, maybe hundreds) of times.
He’d even run them through me when I’d been at Rachelle’s.
But I’d never seen them that close when he was right there, alive, breathing, with his fingers wrapped around my arms, so close I could feel his body heat.
“You okay?” His deep voice rumbled through me.
He had a phenomenal voice, but all I could do was stare in his eyes.
They were a weird light brown/green with a yellow tint at the pupil, but as it radiated out to the edge of the iris it went pure light green.
Startling.
Amazing.
Gorgeous.
I dropped my bag of kitty food.
The crash was loud. The tins overflowed and started rolling everywhere, and all this helped me jerk myself out of my stupor.
I also jerked myself out of his hold and immediately went into a crouch to rescue the cans.
Unfortunately, so did Raiden, and our heads smacked together with a painful thud that sent me falling back, right on my behind. It also sent my sunglasses, which were on top of my head, flying.
I slowly lifted my hand to my head where it slammed into his, thinking, Someone kill me. Please. Right now. Kill me.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked. He was in a crouch, leaning toward me, his hand coming up, fingers wrapping around my wrist.
They burned the instant they touched skin.
I lifted my eyes to his.
Startling.
Amazing.
Gorgeous.
With effort, I found my voice, but when I did, it came out high.
“Are you… uh, okay?”
“Got a hard head,” he replied. “I’m good. You got knocked on your ass.”
That I did.
God!
“I’m good… fine, fine… just, uh, fine and, well… good,” I murmured.
And babbling! I thought, then realized there were cans everywhere, and I realized this mostly because a kid went running toward the door, kicking some and they went flying.
Not thinking and freaking way the heck out, I pulled my hand free from his, shifted to my hands and knees and started crawling around on the floor of the pet store (gah!), gathering up stupid cat food tins.
Seriously, Spot was lucky I loved him or I’d kill him.
I stopped doing this when I felt a tingle shift along the small of my back. I turned my head and saw Raiden had hold of my bag in one hand. He had four tins of cat food clamped in his other, but his body was still and his eyes were locked on my upturned booty.
Oh God.
I was a klutz and a dork.
I was a dorky klutz!
Quickly, I shifted to just my feet, still gathering tins, piling them in my arm, snatching up my glasses, shoving them on my head and not wanting to, but having to move toward Raiden, who had my bag.
“How ‘bout we take this in turns. You go up first,” Raiden suggested.
I forced myself to look at him and saw he was grinning at me.
I’d seen that grin. It was beautiful. I’d seen him smile. That was even more beautiful. Way back in the day, I’d heard his lush, rumbling laughter. Sublime.
But he’d obviously never grinned at me.
I was right. It was beautiful.
Beyond beautiful.
Life altering.
I froze.
Entirely.
Every inch of me.
And I stared.
“Everything okay here?” Krista asked, coming curiously late to this harrowing incident I knew I’d play over and over in my head, wanting to do every second differently and kicking myself that I didn’t.
I forced myself to speak, and this time it wasn’t high. It was squeaky.
“Me first?” I asked Raiden.
His grin got bigger. My insides melted and he jerked up his chin.
I straightened to standing.
“Here’s another can, Hanna,” Mrs. Bartholomew said as Raiden rose to his full height. In other words, towering over all of us.
I turned to her and took the can she was offering. “Thanks, Mrs. B.”
She gave me a smile then looked up at Raiden. “Raid, tell your Mom I said hi.”
“Will do,” he mumbled.
She grinned at him and took off.
Raiden opened the plastic bag, indicating to me I should divest myself of my pile of cat food tins, and I had to lean forward to dump in all the cans I had clutched to my chest. This I did, excruciatingly aware that he could see right down my shirt.
That was when I thanked God I’d tossed all my crappy underwear five months ago and loaded up on the good stuff during my now-not-infrequent trips to Denver.
“I think you got them all,” Krista shared, and I looked to her, lifting a hand, tucking my hair behind my ear and wishing I was anywhere but there.
And I meant anywhere.
A sweatshop in China. At a phone making marketing calls to people who hated marketing calls and thus would abuse me before they hung up on me.